


An End To It All

by tabbycat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, Marauders' Era, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 09:50:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16134782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabbycat/pseuds/tabbycat
Summary: “Hogwarts can’t last forever, you know. I’m leaving in July.”This is the story of how they fell into it, in the safety of Hogwarts. A shared desire to protect Sirius, perhaps, or a shared interest in magical theory. That feeling of waiting for something else to begin.This is the story of how they fell out of it, when the real world looms. It was always going to end, was it not? It would never last. The Death Eaters and the Order called.This is the story of Remus Lupin and Regulus Black.





	An End To It All

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sing-Me-A-Rare Vol.2. Much love to my Beta who shall remain nameless for the moment. 
> 
> Song Prompt - 1979, Smashing Pumpkins
> 
>  
> 
> \-----
> 
>  
> 
> Warning for sexual content is one mild scene and one reference to sexual activity.

He thought he saw him.

Across the crowded bar of the Leaky Cauldron, the night that 1978 would become 1979, Remus Lupin thought he caught sight of the man he’d thought he’d loved. Maybe it hadn’t even been him.

1979, and the others celebrated the turn of the year. The year that this war would be over, they all said. The year that all of the shit would end, and everything would go back to the way it should be. Normal. Calm. Safe.

Remus did not know what that would look like. 

 

——-

 

The next time he saw Regulus Black, he was a headstone. A memorial one, because a body had never been found.

Regulus had disappeared. He was dead. Some said he’d defied Voldemort. Remus didn’t know.

Remus didn’t know anything about Regulus Black, it turned out, despite whatever it was that they had shared, at Hogwarts. Before all of this.

Remus couldn’t remember how it had started. It was lost, somewhere in that last year of Hogwarts. The year where they were desperately trying to cling on to the carefree days of being young, being free, not being a part of the war that grew around them with every day. The year of James and Lily, Peter and Marlene, Sirius and Mary, Remus and him.

No, he remembered. It was days before James and Lily had gone to Hogsmeade for the first time. 

 

——-

 

 _Shakedown 1979, cool kids never have the time_  
On a live wire right up off the street  
You and I should meet  
   
   
——-

 

1978, and the world was exploding.

Seventeen people had died, seventeen war deaths, since the first of the year, and those were the ones that had been proven to be caused by  Voldemort and his Death Eaters. It was Tuesday, the seventeenth of January. A death for every day of the new year.

Remus Lupin had known three of them personally.

He knew these hallways of Hogwarts, with their cold stone and their flickering light, like he knew the collection of scars that crisscrossed his skin. He’d mapped both of them, with precision, watching for changes as if something within them held a pattern or a regularity. The moving staircases did, the damage he could cause to himself did not. He had a library book to return, and he knew that at nine o’clock, the quickest route was down a twisting spiral staircase that only appeared in the late evening. 

The library was deserted, as he had expected it to be. It was January, after all, and generally few students were interested in the place until much closer to the exams. Remus had developed a reputation as a bookworm, and as several less savoury words for someone who studied more frequently than the average student.  Generally only said by James, Sirius, and Peter. To the vast majority of the school, he was still one of the Marauders, someone to be revered, rather than teased, even if he did like books a little too much.

Remus had never been comfortable with that.

He was no more special than anyone else; considerably less special, in fact, and if half of them had known the truth about him they’d have been screaming for him to be out of the school, Marauder or no. He had never enjoyed the hero worship. Not like the others did. The attention made him want to hide.

He had his friends, he had their girlfriends, he had the occasional, well, thing with a boy in Hufflepuff. He wasn’t gay. He didn’t think he was. Just didn’t have much interest in girls. Just as he didn’t the vast majority of the Hogwarts population.

Hence the library. The people who bothered him here usually wanted to know the answer to a question they’d been set for homework, or occasionally, for the bolder ones, ask him to Hogsmeade. Sometimes he went, sometimes he didn’t, he usually had time to help. Mostly, he read things that might come in useful for causing havoc around the castle. Very occasionally, he did some of his homework.

Today it was deserted, thankfully, save for a dark-haired boy in the corner browsing in the Transfiguration section. Remus needed Charms, anyway. He needed to reverse whatever it was James had done to Sirius’ bed, it was driving all of them crackers.

And then, naturally, find revenge on James for ruining everyone’s fucking sleep. 

“Lupin?”

The dark haired boy, Remus noticed only as he approached, was none other than the boy known as Regulus fucking Black, Sirius’ biological brother. And why exactly he’d want to talk to Remus, that was a mystery. He usually contented himself to hexing them, or glaring, or just looking disappointed and disapproving.

“Yeah?”

“You are an associate of my brother.”

“Normal people say friend, Regulus.” Remus didn’t have time for this.

“It comes as no small surprise that my brother is capable of making himself friends.”

“Look, I have shit to do, so if you don’t mind, then I’m going to read. Which is what you do in libraries. Not make passive-aggressive jibes at your brother and his friends. Unless you have anything to actually say?”

“I do, in fact.” 

Now there was a surprise. Regulus shifted his weight slightly from one foot to the other under Remus’ gaze, but he was impressively steady, really. Sirius had painted him as a bit of a weakling, a Mummy’s boy, someone who did the bidding of others.

“I wish to talk to you about my brother.”

“And you’re going to be nice about him?”

“Sirius has made poor choices.”

Yeah, Sirius made poor choices constantly. He did things multiple times a day that could be classed as fucking poor life choices. Just this morning, he had thrown his wand out the window in a fit of anger, and put salt in his own porridge instead of James’. And that was before classes had started.

However, Remus had the vague idea that this wasn’t what Regulus meant.

“I don’t think he’s going to reconsider. Anyway, didn’t your dearest Mummy disown him?”

“He has been blasted from the tapestry, because he is a blood traitor.”

“Because he’s decent.”

“I am worried for him. I am worried what he may mix himself up in, when he leaves Hogwarts.”

“Tell him, not me.” Not that he’d listen. Sirius would hex Regulus, painfully but not permanently, and then spend the next few hours having a breakdown in some obscure part of the castle. A reaction which Remus thought was entirely proportionate, given what his family had done. Given what Regulus had never before shown an interest in preventing. He was, if not a cause, at the very least complicit in what had happened to Sirius. Remus had no time for this.

“Sirius will not listen to me. He will, to you.” Regulus’ eyes were on the books, the floor, the tables, anywhere but Remus’ face. “Please. I must warn him. I must.”

Remus took a look at him then, for the first time really since the boy had been sorted into Slytherin at the beginning of Remus’ second year. Eighteen months younger than Sirius, Regulus Black was no smaller, with the same lean, powerful looking body and the same long, thin face. Regulus’ grey eyes were calm, whereas Sirius’ flitted between angry and amused. His hair was short and neat, his robes freshly pressed and devoid of any suspicious rips. He was handsome. Beautiful, almost.

“Oi, Moony, where the fuck are you? Sirius is being a dick again, and Peter’s stuck to the fucking ceiling, and I’ve told you before, I can’t be trusted to handle them alone.”

James.

Remus made a snap decision, and one he highly suspected he’d later regret.

“Meet me in that deserted classroom on the Charms corridor. You know, the one that got flooded last year?” Remus declined to add that it had been him that had flooded it, well, him and Peter. “Eleven o’clock. Alone, or I’m not coming in.”

James rounded the corner of the stacks, and when he saw who it was Remus was talking to, drew his wand.

“You’d better not be giving us any trouble, Black. I’ve learnt loads of new spells lately, and I can’t wait to try them out on anyone who hassles our Moons.”

Regulus’ posture straightened, the shuffling of his feet stopped, and he drew his wand, raising it to level with James’. The two young men’s eyes met, each of them with the same fire and the same willingness to curse the other.

“Don’t worry, James. He’s not done anything.” Remus shot Regulus a warning look. “Yet.”

Regulus stalked from the room, his eyes on James the entire time. Just before the doors, he looked at Remus. The smallest of nods.  Very distinctly, a confirmation, eleven o’clock that night.

It was hardly an unjustified panic of James’, that Regulus had been giving him trouble. Remus had been getting more and more from the Slytherins, and for the first time, more than Sirius did. He’d been the main target from third year, when it was clear that he would not be following the approved path for a Black. And then Snivellus had discovered what Remus was, and he had never revealed that, Remus was sure of it, because Dumbledore had ensured that he wouldn’t, but he’d told them something.

And all of a sudden, things had gotten far, far nastier.

But then, there were people dying outside Hogwarts, all the time, and this was nothing. This was nothing to what awaited them when they got outside these heavy stone walls that cast such a strong protection over them all. Outside there was war, seventeen deaths since the first of the year, a death for every day. 

And Remus wanted to know what it was he could do to stop it.

 

——-

 

There had been an eighteenth death, if the rumours were to be believed, by the time that Remus was able to extract himself from the Common Room and from dealing with the fallout of Sirius’ latest poor life choice to meet Regulus Black. It was five past eleven already, so Remus stuffed the Marauder’s Map in his pocket as quickly as possible as he readied to leave.

“Where are you going, Remus?” Peter asked, spotting Remus standing up.

“Sending an owl,” he replied, lying as smoothly as he had always been able to. “Mum’s not feeling great, again.”

“I’ll come,” said Sirius. “I fancy a walk. Get away from all the doom and gloom. Not that we can. Away from James and his sodding rules.”

“Nah, don’t,” said Remus. “Probably going to cry, aren’t I? I always do when I write to Mum, and I don’t want a fucking audience.” Sirius didn’t like it when people cried.

So he was free, traversing the corridors through his favourite, secret pattern to the classroom he’d marked out. He ran into nobody, you never did, not if you used the Map and the secret passages and the alcoves properly. 

A corner away from the classroom, he checked it again. Regulus was alone. Good.

“I thought you would not come.”

“I keep my word. I see you’ve kept yours.”

“A Black is a man of his word.”

“I haven’t got all night, you know. What did you want to say?”

“Sirius is in danger. The Dark Lord wishes to recruit him.”

Remus was forced to laugh at that. “Surely even you know that there’s no danger of that? Sirius would never do that, so you’re fine, you can skip along now.”

“No, you do not understand, Lupin. I knew that you would not.”

“What do you mean?”

“When the Dark Lord wishes to recruit someone, the Dark Lord gets what it is that he wants. He will stop at nothing to recruit Sirius, until he irks him, and then he will kill him. It will not be quick. It will be slow, and painful, and likely public. Sirius will serve as a warning, Lupin. He will be what encourages the others into line, if he does not fall into line himself.”

Remus could feel his heart hammering a little, his hands growing sweating on the Marauder’s Map in his pocket and his wand in the other hand. 

“Are you threatening him?”

“I am warning him. I do not want Sirius to die. He is my brother.”

“Funny way of showing it. How’d I know you’re not lying? How do you even know so much about what fucking Voldemort thinks? You’re not, are you?”

“I am not. But I do know of the world, Lupin. And, however much I may dislike my brother, and refute every choice he has made, I do not wish to see him dead.”

“Well, we do have something in common after all.”

“Please, Lupin. Please, help me to save my brother.”

Remus would never know what it was that changed, in that moment. Perhaps it was the look on Regulus’ face, as he asked, no, pleaded with, Remus. It was one mixed of hope and fear, of someone who is using their last card in a high-stakes game. Perhaps it was that it was all absurd, Regulus Black coming to him for actual help with something, when they’d never had a single pleasant interaction. Perhaps it was something else, a more basic fear for Sirius’ life. A fear for his own, by extension. Or sympathy. Remus had never had a blood, a biological brother to lose, but he had the next best thing.

“Okay. I’m not persuading him to join Voldemort. I’ll try and help, though. Try and stop some fucking Death Eater using him as an example to all the errant purebloods who think that torturing is a shit way to spend their evening.”

“You talk of this as if it were a joke.”

“It isn’t. Eighteen people have died this year. And I can’t see it ending any time soon, can you?”

“The figure is nineteen.”

“There’s been another one?”

“You, as all of your sort do, fail to notice the deaths that you do not see as important. Florian Lestrange was killed last week.”

“Well, no. I don’t count him.” His flash of whatever it had been towards Regulus was fading. “He was killing Muggles at the time.”

“He was doing what must be done, to him, the same as the others were, to them.”

“In the main, the others you speak of were sitting in their houses.”

“You do not know, Lupin. You do not understand.”

“I don’t think I want to, if it leads me to murdering people, thanks. I’m going back now. I’ll try to stop your mates killing Sirius, yeah, and you can do the same, and we don’t need to see one another for that.”

“Hear me out.”

“I’ve heard enough.”

Remus knew he was right. Sirius wouldn’t join. Sirius would do almost anything to stay out of the clutches of the Death Eaters, and away from his obvious sympathiser of a brother.

“You do not understand. This is all that I know. This, what we would die to protect.” A pause. “I know my brother would not agree. But that does not mean he deserves to die.”

With a flick of his wand, Remus conjured a more comfortable chair from one of the abandoned, broken seats that littered the classroom. As an afterthought, he did one for Regulus, too.

“I don’t know why I’m still here,” he said, as he sat in it. “Go on, sit down. Why am I still here?”

“You would do anything to protect my brother. And those other two friends of yours.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact, and one that Remus knew was entirely true. 

“Yeah, and they’d do the same for me.” They’d already done more than enough for him, but there you were.

“Do we all not wish for that? The companionship? The feeling that this is your place, and not anywhere else?”

Remus thought about it, picking loose threads from his mediocre Transfiguration of an armchair. “I’d reckon so.”

“Would you fight for that, Remus Lupin? Would you die for that?”

“Of course.” Remus didn’t need the thinking time, not this time.

“Well, there you have it.” He looked languid in his chair, as Sirius would, but there was a grace and a poise to him that Sirius had tried so hard to lose. Remus began to feel as if he shouldn’t compare Regulus to his brother. “I am intrigued by you,  Lupin.”

“Yeah?”

Something jumped in his stomach, but Remus’ voice remained level and his eye contact with the other boy steady. There was no reason for that reaction. None at all.

“You are not like my brother and your friends. No. I have been watching you for quite some time.” Remus realised that Regulus had been looking at him like James looked at Lily, for quite some time.

“Okay,” he said, and sat down again, ignoring the chair and hauling himself up onto a table and swinging his legs underneath it. They clattered on the bars underneath, in a rhythm that annoyed even himself. James would knock him off within four minutes, three on a bad day, if James were here. But, it was just him and Regulus, and suddenly Remus felt more exposed than he had been before.

“Yes.” Regulus stood up, walked over to Remus, and planted a kiss on his lips. “Do not tell me that you had not thought the same as I.”

“I hadn’t,” said Remus, entirely truthfully, but now he could not think of anything else. “Did you even come here about Sirius?” It was not quite right, not quite what he meant to say. Of course it would have been Sirius.

“I did. But there is a reason I chose you to approach, rather than Potter or Pettigrew. I am intrigued by you.”

“If this is just because you’ve heard about me and Darren Albridge, and you’re curious…”

“That Hufflepuff does not hold my interest. And I am certain of what I want, Remus. I am always certain.”

That pleading look, the fear of earlier was gone, and replaced with something closer to the Regulus that Remus had seen before. But this one was both harder and softer at the same time. More determined, as he held eye contact firmly with Remus, more powerful in the way that he kissed Remus for a second time. Softer, in the way his hands disappeared into Remus’ hair. Smug, as he drew back from that second kiss.

“I am certain you want this, too.”

 

——-

 

——

 

“Lupin.”

“Black.”

He knocked against Remus in the corridor, causing the entire pile of books in his arms to fall to the floor. 

“Watch it!”

Remus bent to the floor to pick them up, and to his surprise, the younger Black brother did too.

“I have been considering reading that elementary Alchemy text, myself. Would you recommend it as a primer?”

That was not what Remus had been expecting. He looked around, a quick glance over his shoulder, checking the area. They were entirely alone in the corridor, it being fifteen minutes before curfew. Still, it could be a trap. Remus stood up, leaving the alchemy book in Regulus’ hand.

“What do you want, Black?”

“A recommendation on an alchemy textbook.”

“I’ll give you one. Later.”

It might have seemed like a threat to any bystander, said as it was with a growl, but they both knew it as code. 

 

——-

 

Remus had walked from their first encounter determined it would never be repeated. Determined that the other boy was wrong; he was not interested. He was a Slytherin in with the group who all, ultimately, took the Dark Mark. He was a Gryffindor, best friends with the boy’s estranged brother, talking of joining the Order.

It would never work. It was over before it ever began.

But somehow he went back.

And then he went back again, until they were meeting twice a week, at least. They scouted out abandoned classrooms, obscure corners of the castle, wherever they were likely to find privacy. They rarely met outside. They couldn’t. Remus left Gryffindor Tower with the Map stuffed in a pocket, his face neutral and an excuse ready on his lips. The rest of them were all caught up in each other, anyway. James and Lily. Sirius and Mary. Peter and Marlene.

Remus, and now Regulus.

Regulus lent Remus books on the interesting parts of magical history that Binns had never bothered to cover. Remus lent Regulus magazines on experimental Transfiguration. They discussed magical theory, Herbology, magizoology, history. Music. Remus had never got into wizarding music, and Regulus took this as a personal challenge.

It was as if they were any other pair.

 

——-

By the end of February, the death count was up to forty-one. Not quite a death for every day, any more, but significant.

“Scum,” said Sirius, loudly,  throwing the Daily Prophet down into his eggs. “Fucking scum, the lot of them.”

“Sirius,” said Mary, putting her arm round him. “It’s going to be okay.”

“That’s the problem,” said Lily, stirring her tea with a spoon, too much sugar added to the cup. “I don’t think it is going to be, is it?”

“We’ll stop it,” said James, his face set and determined. Once James set his mind to something, it happened. 

“Yeah,” said Peter. “The four of us are going to fight.”

“Five,” said Lily, firmly. James kissed her lightly on the head.

“Six,” said Marlene. Peter squeezed her arm on the table.

“Seven,” Mary said. “Seven of us.”

Remus nodded. “Seven.” Then he looked down at his plate, and, out of the corner of his eye, at Regulus Black.

 

——-

 

“James and Sirius are so sure,” said Lily, sliding into a seat next to Remus in the Gryffindor Common Room. The other Marauders were in detention, for some disaster or other in Potions. “They just know they want to fight, don’t they?”

“So do I,” said Remus.

“Do you? I don’t. I know it’s the right thing to do, but I don’t want to. It’s going to be really dangerous.”

“Being out there is going to be dangerous.”

“Yeah,” sighed Lily. “I s’pose. I just don’t want Hogwarts to be over. When we all go out there, all seven of us, what’s the chances we’ll all survive it? I tried to say this to James, but he’s, well, he’s James, isn’t he? You’re the sensible one, Remus, you understand, don’t you?”

Slim. The chances of them all surviving were slim.

Hogwarts was a safe haven, where he could fuck around with a future Death Eater and there would be no consequences. Detention, and how many hundreds of those had Remus had?

Remus was not so sure he was the sensible one. 

Besides, he was only not in detention because he didn’t take Potions.

 

——-

 

“Black,” said Remus, approaching Regulus from behind in the library. “Slughorn wants to see you.”

Regulus scowled, the expression marring his otherwise perfect face.

“I will go when I am ready.”

“He says now. But I dunno, I’m only playing the owl. Do what you want.” Remus walked off, and heard the scrape of the stool on stone and Regulus excusing himself from his friends as he stood. 

They were together within twenty minutes.

Today it was the Prefect’s bathroom, the door locked and the Map abandoned on the floor to enable their escape. Remus had shrugged half out of his robes as they came in through the door, Regulus had tugged away the other half. They fumbled with fastenings on the other’s clothes, pulling and tearing and fiddling with buttons, until both of them stood, naked, in the stone-tiled room. 

They smashed into each other, that was the only word for it, lips searching for each other and hands roaming. Remus’ hands curled into Regulus’ hair, and the other boy’s were snaking, surely and slowly, down his back. Remus felt them on his arse, around his arse, and he pulled Regulus closer, and this, this was how it was supposed to feel. Regulus’ cock twitched against Remus’ leg, and the feeling that gave him was better than anything else he’d felt, with anyone else, girl or boy.

They’d gone this far before, jacking one another off. But Remus wanted more.

“Have you ever, you know?” Regulus asked, his face flushed.

“Yeah. Three times.” Darren, the Hufflepuff. He sort of knew what he was doing. “You?”

“No.”

“That’s okay. If you want to, we can. Don’t have to.”

“No. I wish to do it. With you.”

 

——-

 

“You know this can’t last,” said Remus, flicking through a copy of The Herbologist in a strangely large storeroom off the Potions corridor. 

“I do not wish to think of it.” Regulus flipped his book over to show Remus a page. “Do you not think this is interesting? They have discovered improvements in Shrinking Solutions.”

“You’re changing the subject. And you know I’m shit at Potions.”

“Please, Remus.” The other boy climbed over onto his lap, distracting him with his face and his body and that scent. “Not tonight.”

And Remus didn’t really want to think of the fucking destruction of their lives and their worlds, either.

 

——-

 

_We don't even care, as restless as we are_  
We feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts  
And poured cement, lamented and assured  
To the lights and towns below 

 

———

 

“Will you come with me to Hogsmeade, Saturday?”

Remus blinked. “How would we do that?”

“I just want this to feel as if this is real.”

“I just fucked you. And you sucked me off. It’s as real as it could be.” They were naked, lying on a hastily conjured sofa in a room just off the staircase to the Owlery. A healthy breeze blew through the opened window, bathing them in the last parts of the day’s sunlight in shades of blue and gold and orange.

“I want to be outside with you. Not in this castle. Somewhere real.”

“Alright,” said Remus. “There’s a track going up into the mountains from behind the Hogs Head. Meet me at the gate there, at eleven.”

“That is acceptable.”

“I’m going to teach you how to say ‘okay’. How to sound like a normal sixteen-year-old.”

Regulus smiled, a long grin that seemed to stretch wider than his face.

“Okay,” he said, and he sounded like he wasn’t him.

They met by the gate, at five to eleven, and Remus took off ahead of Regulus without much of a greeting. He stopped behind a clump of trees five minutes walk from the gate, invisible from almost all of Hogsmeade. 

“Can you Apparate?” he asked.

“I am not yet seventeen,” Regulus replied.

“Yeah. Okay. Hold on, then.”

Regulus’ hand grasped Remus’ arm, with that now familiar tingle Remus felt every time their skin touched. Hogsmeade disappeared with a jerk of their necks and a rush of wind and sound.

They reappeared on a dilapidated side-street. A skip piled high with broken chairs and bits of plasterboard blocked them from the rest of the street, a scratched-up blue car next to it. Remus grabbed Regulus, who seemed unable to shift, and dragged him along, round, onto the high street. Woolworths loomed ahead of them, a bookshop to their left, a little cafe beside it. British Home Stores up the street. A shop selling discount homewares, stock piled on the street in front with handwritten signs declaring the prices.

“Where is this?” Regulus’ eyes were roving about, looking everywhere, as if he had never seen a Muggle high street before. Possibly, he hadn’t.

“Cardiff,” said Remus. “They don’t know us here.”

“Okay,” said Regulus, still unable to tear his eyes away from the scene. “It is Muggle.”

“Yeah. Come on. There’s a cafe that sells stuff you’ll be used to, or we can get a burger from Wimpy. Bet you’ve never seen a Wimpy.”

“And what exactly is a Wimpy?”

Remus laughed, at the words, at the look on his face, at the absurdity of the young man in his robes and his neat hair. They were attracting stares, already. 

“Get in here,” he said, pulling Regulus along and into the nearest department store, a Marks and Spencer’s. Regulus looked even more absurd, in amongst the ladies coats and sensible skirts in the latest colours. Remus dragged him towards the toilets, at least they had toilets, and shoved some clothes at him from his rucksack. “Change,” he said. “They should fit.”

He’d nicked them from Sirius, because the two were about the same size, but he wasn’t going to say that. To either of them.

Regulus came out a whole fifteen minutes later, and not a moment too soon. An overeager security guard had tried to throw the lurking Remus out three times. He looked a strange combination of faintly ridiculous and very attractive in the Muggle jeans and t-shirt, his robes neatly folded over his arm. He stood awkwardly in them, but they showed off his arse.

“Looking good,” said Remus. What he wanted to do was snog him, but Remus’ mother had made sure he knew how to behave in Marks and Sparks.

“Thank you,” said Regulus, stiffly. “They do not feel as if they should be right.”

“You’ll be fine. Chuck me your robes.” Remus stuffed them in his bag. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Well,” said Remus, as they strode back out of the shop, past the huffy security guard and onto the street. “You seem confused enough by all of this. Let’s go to Wimpy.”

Regulus was astounded by the Wimpy, that was the only word for his face and his slow, jerky actions, and the little delay in his speech when he tried to order a burger and some chips. They sat in a booth, near the back, surrounded by families out for some Saturday shopping. A little girl in a purple leotard and little pink ballet shoes did a dance for her adoring grandparents. a group of teenagers sat six of them squashed into a booth meant for four, arguing about music. A woman scribbled furiously in a notepad, spare pen tucked behind her ear.

“It is not like anywhere else I have ever been.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t.”

“I have never seen so many Muggles.” He was watching them as if they were from another planet. 

Remus wanted to ask him then what he thought of them. Whether he still believed all the shit that they both knew was spouted in the Slytherin Common Room. Muggles were muck. Muggles were less than muck. Not human, not right, not allowed to have power. Wizards were superior. Always.

Instead, he asked if Regulus liked the burger, and he felt the sting of guilt. He ought to be changing Regulus’ mind. He should be fighting that toxic fucking mess of ideas.

He was talking about the bread the burger was served in, and his stomach twisted up with the guilt.

Remus Lupin was a coward.

“They are just like we are,” Regulus stated, later, when they were sat on a bench below Cardiff Castle, just looking, just watching the people pass by. 

“What did you expect?” Remus asked.

“I do not know,” said Regulus. “That they were dirty. Their toilets, I looked, they are just like those at Hogwarts. That they had no intelligence. Those two,” he pointed, two young men dressed similar to Remus and Regulus, talking intently, “they are discussing politics. They appear as if they understand, if they have theories. It is not what I expected.”

“My mum used to bring me here all the time,” he said. They didn’t do personal. They didn’t discuss family. Or politics. “We used to walk along the Taff, that’s the river, in Bute Park. Got locked in there once, they shut the gates at dusk, and we didn’t know. I opened it with my magic, I was only about four. I didn’t even know I was doing it, but I knew Mum was worried, so I wanted to help. When I was a bit older we used to go to the museum, it’s huge. We didn’t stay near here long, though, we left when I was seven. Didn’t settle anywhere longer than a year, after that.”

“Why?”

Remus supposed he’d never said.

“Remember you can’t get back without me?”

Regulus nodded.

“I’m a werewolf.”

“I have noticed. There are rumours. Severus has made valid points. I did watch you closely, for a year or more. I have seen your body.”

“You don’t care?”

“I was not always comfortable with it. My father has werwolf associates. I do not feel at risk.”

Remus nodded.

“Next time, you will come to London. You have shown me somewhere that is important to you,” said Regulus, simply. He had lost the awkward air he had worn alone with the Muggle clothing, and had relaxed into the jeans and the jacket he had purchased from a Muggle shop. “I wish to do the same for you.”

They shagged, Remus and Regulus. They talked about magical theory and their classes. They didn’t do personal.

“I’d like that,” said Remus. 

“Another day,” said Regulus, and his hand reached out for Remus, intertwining itself with his. “We can visit places I went as a child.”

“That’d be nice,” said Remus, because he’d like that, very much. He’d like to do personal. 

 

———

 

_Faster than the speed of sound  
Faster than we thought we'd go, beneath the sound of hope_

 

——-

 

March flew into April, into May. They met twice a week. They fucked, they listened to music, they didn’t discuss the war. 

Regulus was incredibly clever. Quick, a good memory for facts, able to link them. Remus was better with the abstract, turning those facts into a theory. They fit together. They thought about writing an article on something. Under fake names, perhaps, if there was still a war. But it would be public. 

Something that tied them together for all eternity, although neither of them said that.

“We could be the experts. Nobody else is looking into this line of enquiry. It would be new.”

“It’d be good if we could."

Not with the war. It sat in the background.

“Maybe when we have left Hogwarts.”

Maybe when all of this is over, Remus thought. Maybe when we can admit that we see each other. Admit to whatever this was.

——-

 

“Do you think I should propose to Lily?”

Remus looked up from his book, as Peter did it in stereo alongside him. Sirius dropped his wand.

“No,” said Sirius. “We’re eighteen.”

“I love her,” said James. “I love her and I want to tell her that, in case it all goes wrong.”

“Because you’re a sappy idiot,” said Peter. “Buy her flowers. I bought Marls flowers.”

“Because we’re going to join,” said James. “I asked her. She wants to fight.”

Remus had agreed to join the Order of the Phoenix. He hadn’t seen any other way. He’d held his hand out with the rest of them to say an oath, because what other choice did he have? He’d be tracked down by the Death Eaters either way, for what he was. For what he could be with them. He wanted to fight. He wanted to end it.

If he ended it, he could be with Regulus.

Regulus, who would never join the Order.

“Don’t propose to her, please,” said Sirius. “Do what Pete says. Pete’s good with girls. Buy her flowers. Jewellery. Mary loves jewellery. But no ring.”

“Remus?” asked James. “What do you think?” 

James often did what he wanted anyway, without listening to his friends. It usually worked out for him.

“Do it,” said Remus, deciding. “Last day of term.”

Fifty-nine people had died that year.

 

——-

“Freak.”

“Fuck off, Snape.”

Remus was used to this. Remus had been a target for Severus Snape since the early days of Hogwarts, when he had been a tiny Gryffindor with no idea where he fit and Snape had been bigger, greasier, and better at magic.

“Get out my way. I’ll curse you.”

“Didn’t think I was in it.”

He was propped up in an alcove, waiting for Sirius, really. They had a vague plan to explode the toilets. It was a shit prank, but the NEWTs were getting to them, and they hadn’t been able to think of anything better. Snape had loads of room to pass. 

He was going towards the toilets Sirius was exploding, but that wasn’t relevant.

Snape’s dark eyes focused in on Remus, narrowing. He lowered his voice to a whisper as he stepped right in, his body almost touching Remus’.

“Half-breed.”

It always hurt, every time, however good he had got at pretending that it didn’t.

“Fuck off,” Remus repeated. What else did he have to say? He couldn’t refute it. He put out his arm, pushed Snape away.

“Don’t touch me,” said Snape, sneering, drawing his wand. “If you touch me I’ll tell everyone what you are.”

“You can’t,” said Remus, certain even if the panic was rising inside him, hot and fearful. “Dumbledore said you couldn’t.”

“That’s what you think.”

“Severus,” came a voice from the corridor, one that could be Remus’ saviour. Regulus appeared,  smoothing his robes. “Severus, we were supposed to be meeting.”

“I’m just dealing with this scum,” said Snape, taking two steps towards Remus again and staring him down, wand poking into Remus’ stomach.

“Leave him,” said Regulus, lazily, refusing to make eye contact with Remus. Anyone who looked at him would think he did not care what happened next. Remus knew different. His boots shifted slightly on the stone, his hands picking at one another. “We have places to be, Severus, he is unimportant.”

Pretence, Remus hoped.

“I don’t want to hex you,” he said, to Snape, and he ignored Regulus. “But I will, if you don’t get off me.”

“You wouldn’t. You would never act without your friends. Maybe you’re too weak. Scared. Useless. Or scared you’ll go too far and reveal yourself as you truly are.”

“You mean as a better dueller than you?” It was fighting talk, it was a load of rubbish. Things you said to make it seem like you wanted the argument. So as not to lose face. 

“Severus,” said Regulus, finally. “Leave him.”

“No. Why should I? Getting soft, Black? The Dark Lord won’t take you if you’re soft.”

“No,” said Regulus. He looked Remus up and down, that look of utter contempt he usually reserved for Muggleborns. Remus withered under it, without wanting to. He pulled himself up, and their eyes met. It was apology in Regulus’ eyes. “Because he isn’t worth your time, the half-breed cunt.”

“Fuck off,” said Remus, walking away, as Regulus held Snivellus’ wand hand down, the wand angled to the floor. “Fuck off, Voldemort-shagging twats.”

It hadn’t been his best insult, Remus decided, as the world faded to black and he felt a searing pain in his left leg.

 

——

“I am sorry,” said Regulus, for the thousandth time. “How else did you expect me to act?”

“Peter says he came round the corridor, and saw both of you casting curses at me. Marlene was there too. She says the same. Who do you expect me to believe, my best friend and his girlfriend, or, or, you?”

“You. That is what I am to you.”

“Oh, fucking hell, don’t make this about you. You cursed me in the back and you’re making this about you.”

“I thought you were my boyfriend.”

“I thought boyfriends didn’t fucking curse one another.”

“We said we would not let anyone know! That nobody could find out!”

“Maybe I meant not like this!” Remus pulled himself away, as best as the curse damage could. He’d only been out of the hospital wing a day. Regulus had visited, or tried to. Remus had refused to see him, and Madame Pomfrey had a soft spot for Remus, so Regulus had been thrown out. “Maybe I didn’t mean that at all!”

“My brother,” said Regulus. “My brother would not like this.”

“No,” said Remus, angrily. “The world isn’t about what Sirius wants.” Sirius had revealed his lycanthropy to Snape. Regulus had cursed him. 

Sirius had not given a thousand and one fucking excuses.

“My friends would attack you more than they do already.”

“Yes.” Remus sighed. “You’re right. We can’t tell anyone. I hate your friends, and they hate me. My friends hate you. I’ve joined the Order of the Phoenix, and your friends are taking the Dark Mark. We can’t tell anyone.” This isn’t going to work, was the unsaid last sentence.

“I love you,” Regulus said.

This had a time limit. It was ending.

“Do you love me?” Regulus asked.

Remus kissed him. It wasn’t an answer, either way.

 

——-

 

“Hogwarts can’t last forever, you know. I’m leaving in July.”

“I am aware of that.” Regulus sighed, leaning back into Remus, lacing his fingers into those of the other man. “I wish that you could stay.”

“I can’t.” Remus wished that too.

“It is dangerous out there. I don’t, I don’t want you to get hurt.” Regulus looked up at Remus. “Please, do not put yourself in a dangerous situation.”

“The way it’s going, I don’t think it matters whether you put yourself in dangerous situations or not. They’ll find you, given half a chance.” 

Remus had thought about it all at length. Leaving Hogwarts had suddenly become so very real. It has been a landmark up ahead for so long, something that he would deal with later. In reality, he had been putting it off. There was a point at which he would have to accept that the world was unlikely to want to employ a werewolf. And, however well he hid it, someone, eventually, would work it out.

“Do you ever wonder what will happen when we die?”

The question shocked Remus, really. He‘d been thinking about his job prospects. Regulus had been thinking about death.

“No. Mum believes in a Muggle god. I used to go to church with her. They taught of heaven and hell, but I don’t believe that. I’d be condemned to hell, anyway, being what I am. So maybe that’s why. But we just crumble to dust in the end, don’t we? That’s it. Nothing to it. Not worth thinking about.”

“I suppose.” Regulus didn’t look that convinced.

“Look at it this way. If you Vanish an object it disappears into nothingness. Component parts, atoms, the Muggles call them. And when we die, it’s similar. We become a part of everything and nothing, really, and what’s left is the bones.”

“And they turn into dust?”

“I suppose, yeah.”

“It is a bit depressing, is it not?” 

“It isn’t going to happen any time soon.” But, Remus thought, you couldn’t be so sure of that, any more. There was a war out there, and he was heading out into it in a few short months. And he’d fight. He’d always known he would, somehow, even when he hadn’t know it in so many words as he did now. The war had become personal. 

And who would employ him? He had no other prospects.

Regulus would be on the other side, if he chose a side.

“There’s a war out there,” said Regulus.

“What will you do?”

“I will do what I must.”

“If that means what I think it means…” Remus let his words hang. He wondered what Regulus thought the end of his sentence would have been. Remus himself did not entirely know. 

“I will do what I must, for my family and for my honour.”

“Yeah, fine. I don’t want to talk about this. We were having a nice afternoon.”

“Before you asked me of my intentions.”

“Before you brought up death and war!”

They lapsed into silence. Remus untangled from Regulus, walked to the other side of the room, and began flipping through a book. The words were squiggles, interspersed by gruesome pictures. He shut it with a muffled bang.

“I thought that Dumbledore had banned that book from Hogwarts.” It was an olive branch, one that Remus wasn’t sure he was ready to accept. “My father has a copy. I read some of it, last summer. The spells have a lot of possibilities, but whether they are possibilities that should be explored practically, I do not know.”

Remus slammed the book down.

“There isn’t time for fucking theory any more, Regulus! What are you going to do in this war? Are you going to try and kill me and my friends?”

“Please, Remus. We do not have long left at Hogwarts.”

“No, which is why we need to make the decision now!” He stormed away again, back to the opposite side of the abandoned  classroom, disturbing dust from the top of an old Welsh dresser. He glowered at Regulus from his position. “We don’t have the luxury of fucking time to discuss it like schoolboys!”

“I have another year at Hogwarts. The war may be over by then. “ He looked down, at his feet. “My family expects that I will join the Dark Lord.”

“And will you?”

“I must join the Dark Lord. You do not understand, Remus. You are a half-blood. Your family is not a part of all of this. You have not been taught the importance of keeping our society flourishing. We must retain our purity. We must continue to look after our own interests, those of our families and of our children. The pure of blood will die out, if we do not.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. You said it didn’t matter that I was a half-blood, and fucking worse!”

“The Dark Lord has no problem with werewolves, and neither do I.”

“No, well, fucking thanks, Regulus, nice that Voldemort endorses you having been shagging one for the last few months. Does he approve all your liaisons in detail, or just in broad brush strokes. Could you marry a werewolf or a half-blood, or are we just good for a quick release every now and again, when you’re looking for a bit of safe danger?”

“Remus, be reasonable.”

“I think this is pretty fucking reasonable, thanks, given what you’re saying. You believe all their shit, and that’s fine. Get out. No, wait. I don’t want to be here, so I’m going. This place will remind me of you as long as I live, and that’s the last thing that I want to be reminded of, some pureblood ponce who can’t see past the end of Voldemort’s nose. Go fuck yourself, Regulus. I won’t be providing you with that service any more.”

“Remus!”

He ignored the shout of the other boy as he strode out through the door of the classroom, his footsteps getting quicker and quicker until he was running down the hallways in no particular direction, panting and with hot, wet tears falling down his cheeks. He collapsed into an alcove, breathing hard, unable to prevent the sobs coming out more noisily than he would have hoped. His back hit the cold stone as he slid to the floor, propping himself up against the walls.

Calm. He had to become calm. If anyone saw him like this, there’d be questions, and he was in no state to answer them. He’d attract Filch if he wasn’t careful.

“Remus?”

Well, it wasn’t Filch. Not that Lily Evans was likely to be much better.

“Remus?” She crouched down beside him, conjuring him a handkerchief. “Remus, what on earth is wrong?”

“Nothing. S’nothing. I’m fine.”

“Remus, I’ve known you seven years, and I’ve never seen you cry. Not once.” She sat beside him, putting a hand around his shoulders. He tried his hardest not to recoil from the touch. “This isn’t nothing.”

“Is.” He’d have preferred to have been more eloquent, but it was what he could get out.

“You don’t have to tell me anything, but at least admit there is something. Is it your mystery boyfriend?”

“You know?”

“We don’t know who it is, but you sneak off all the time, and James says you take that map every time so the others can’t see who you’re with. You usually come back happy, but lately sometimes you’ve been sad or angry. Your hair is messier than usual when you come back happy, sometimes your clothes aren’t back on right. And we all know you don’t like girls, so it stands to reason it’s a boy. We might not be Ravenclaws, but we’re not stupid.”

“Fine. Yes.” He wondered how much of this he could trust Lily with. “We broke up.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I can go slap him for dumping you, if you like? Won’t even tell James anything.”

“I dumped him.”

“Ah, maybe I won’t slap anyone than.”

“Best not to. He’d hate you, anyway.”

“Slytherin?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, come on, all the best people have dated Slytherins. Except James. I’m fairly sure he’d combust if one touched him.”

“Hogwarts is going to end soon, Lily. It’s all going to change.”

“Yeah. I’m terrified, aren’t you?”

He was. He was. It was all going to be over, and he wasn’t ready at all.

Remus had lost count of the amount of people that had died in 1978.

 

———

 

He saw Regulus once more before he left Hogwarts.

“Lupin,” he said, strolling up to Remus as bold as brass on the grass outside, as Remus lay back on the floor, having finished his NEWTs and just wanting to enjoy the sunshine. His legs were half on Lily’s, who was tangled into James. James rested his head on Sirius, holding hands with Mary, who was sitting up while Marlene plaited her hair into a complicated style from her seat on Peter’s lap. It was idyllic, and it was nearly the end of this sort of thing.

“Fuck off, Regulus,” said Sirius, a reflex rather than anything.

“Professor Dumbledore wishes to talk to you, Lupin,” said Regulus, ignoring Sirius entirely.

“No.”

“Remus!” That was Marlene. “It might be important!”

“If Dumbledore wants you, you should go,” said James, craning his neck to look at Remus. “It might be important.”

“It won’t be,” said Remus, knowing that this was nothing to do with Dumbledore and everything to do with Regulus fucking Black and that he wanted no part of it all.

“Fuck off, Regulus,” said Sirius, again. “Before I hex your balls off.”

“Sirius!”

“Fine,” said Remus, disentangling himself from the pile of Marauder and girlfriend, that he was the awkward seventh member of anyway. “I’ll go. But this had better not be any fucking funny business, Black.”

“I would not,” said Regulus. 

“He would,” muttered Sirius. 

Remus looked back on his friends, their lives so much less complicated. Lily was giving him a significant look, so, excellent. She’d fucking worked it all out, then.

He followed Regulus back into the school, up the staircase several flights, left onto a corridor. Up a quiet, swirly staircase that not many people knew about, into a little room they’d been to before. It had happy memories. It had memories of a time that would not happen again.

“Yes?” Remus asked, leaning against the wall, his fingers twisting the hem of his sleeve.

“I wished to see you again, before you went.”

“I don’t want to see you.”

“Remus, please. Do not be like this.”

“I’ll be like I want. Have you joined up yet, then?”

“Remus. I just wish to talk to you.”

“And I’m not talking to you unless I know!” Remus leant forwards and grabbed for the other man’s sleeve, Regulus pulled back across the room. They stood, across the room from each other, glowering. Remus felt the throb in his belly, that he still wanted this man. But he didn’t. He didn’t, and he couldn’t.

“Show me. Or I walk.” Remus tried to infuse his voice with all of what he felt. “I want to want you, Regulus.”

Regulus rolled his left sleeve back, his school robes far more expensive than Remus could ever have hoped to afford, and sure enough, just as Remus had known there would be, there was an ugly, dark tattoo on his arm. A skull and a snake, laced with dark magic, reeking of it. It marred him. He had been an attractive boy. Handsome.

“I think I walk anyway.”

“Remus.”

“I can’t be with you if you do this. I said that. It’s been over for a while, but that’s it. Over.” His heart hurt. His whole chest hurt, and his head, too. His feet felt like weights. He should have been walking from the room,  but he wasn’t.

“Remus. I did what I had to do.”

“You had choices. We all did.”

“And you chose to join the Order of the Phoenix long before I chose this. You could have chosen differently too, Remus.”

“No,” Remus said. “I couldn’t. It was always going to be this way, wasn’t it? It was always going to end.”

This time, he managed to make his feet move. Every step he took towards the door was harder than the one before it, but he was going, and it was the right thing to do. He thought of Sirius, when he did it. He thought of James and Peter. The real people. The ones who made the right choices.

He watched as Regulus’ face went from set and powerful through confused, startled and then to sorrow.

He kept on walking. He did not say goodbye.

Later, that was the one thing he would come to regret, from all of it.

 

———

1979.

The death toll continued to rise. And then the one that shattered Remus more than the others, even though he was an enemy now, and he was Sirius’ bastard brother, and he was nothing to Remus that anyone knew anything about.

Sirius carried on when Regulus died.  He did everything he would normally have done, but it was exaggerated as if for a film camera. He celebrated too raucously when things went well.  When they went badly, he was a mess of black curls and flopping limbs, drunk on Firewhisky either way.

Remus did not react.

“He was the one, wasn’t he?” asked Lily, several days after they’d discovered his death, at a Christmas party. She was pregnant, invisibly, the wedding ring from her marriage earlier this year glittering on her finger. One the other side of the crowded party, Marlene was seen showing off a sparkling engagement ring Peter had given her. Mary was clinging on Sirius. Remus was single. Alone.

“Who?” Remus pretended he didn’t understand.

“That night in seventh year, when I found you in the corridor and you’d dumped someone.” She lowered her voice to barely above a whisper. “It was Regulus, wasn’t it?”

He didn’t see the point in lying. It was so long ago. It was over. He was dead.

“Yes.”

“I thought so then, but, it was better not to say anything. I won’t tell Sirius. Or James.”

“Peter?” Remus attempted a smile.

“Nah. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thanks.” He smiled, properly this time, as she rubbed her belly. “Can’t wait to meet the baby.”

“I’m enjoying being pregnant, for now. I mean, I want to meet him, but I’ve got to get him out first, and, honestly, I don’t want to think about that yet. You’ll meet someone, if you want to. Is that insensitive? I know he’s only just died, but it was over a year ago now.”

“Eighteen months. He was going to take the Mark when he turned seventeen. I didn’t want anything else to do with him, after that.”

“No. I get that. I shudder to think I used to sort-of fancy Severus.”

Lily understood, he realised. 

“You’ve found someone better,” he said, and perhaps he would to.

 

———

 

_The street heats the urgency of sound  
As you can see there's no one around_

 

———

 

“I don’t know if I should bring flowers. You’re dead, and you died because you joined him. Didn’t you? And you knew what you were getting yourself into. You knew what you’d be asked to do. All you fuckers did, you and your brother both. I hate him, you know. I hate him for what he did.

“I can’t remember if I hate you.

“Rumour is, you died because you were trying to get out. That’s what they’re saying, or were saying, in the last days of the war. Everyone’s talking about James and Lily, now. Your brother’s taken the Death Eater scum spotlight. Bet your mother is fucking proud, isn’t she? Two sons have died for the cause she believed in? I never thought Sirius believed. I never thought you didn’t. Life has these ways of surprising you. I thought Lily and James would be safe. I thought Sirius would keep them safe. I never thought he’d kill Peter, and kill James and Lily, and that I’d be the last fucking one left.

“I brought you flowers, because I was bringing them for everyone else. People look at you, you know, when you buy this many flowers in a funeral director’s. Little old witches, looking at you then looking away, shaking their heads, muttering to their friends. ‘Poor boy,’ they say. ‘He must have seen some stuff.’ I don’t want their fucking sympathy. I want my friends back.  I want you back.

“I never answered you when you asked if I loved you. When you said you loved me.

“I still don’t know the answer. I don’t know why I’m here. Why I’m talking to you instead of talking to James and Lily. They won’t let me look after Harry. Too dangerous. Don’t have enough money. I’m not his godfather. Your brother is, and he’s a - he’s in fucking Azkaban. I can’t, I don’t have the words to describe what he is. None of the things I can come up with are bad enough.

“I think I did love you, probably. Can you love someone that isn’t right for you? Can you love someone who wants a world that would destroy everyone you love?”

Remus threw down the flowers onto Regulus’ grave, on the cold November morning. The dawn rose, softly lighting the Black family cemetery, warming the graves of hundreds of years of the Ancient and Noble House of Black. The last living son would die in Azkaban. The family was two old men and Walburga Black. Good fucking riddance. 

The cemetery was deserted, nobody wanted to pay their respects to the Blacks at this ungodly hour. Nobody was around, nobody cared about the werewolf, skinnier than he ought to be for his frame, with the faded, patched up overcoat and the boots with the unmatched laces. Nobody would be at home waiting for him, either. 

“Goodbye,” he said. “Goodbye, Regulus.”

It had been over for years.

He was alone.


End file.
